Now that monks are awesome again, (and they can flurry with only one weapon), what's the coolest weapon to flurry with?

Hair! ::glee::

So, we're mixing a martial class with a pure spellcaster, which means I want to go into Eldritch Knight (barring any better options), and to qualify I need to go sohei to get the (unwanted) martial weapon proficiencies.

So, help! Help me fill out the missing pieces, to make this character a terrifying (and awesome) combat monster!

1. What race should I pick?
2. What are some good witch spells/patrons that synergize with the EK?
3. Should I ditch WIS entirely, and rely on using light armor and Arcane Armor Training? (although the sohei dev says I shouldn't be able to flurry in armor)
4. What are some more good feats?
5. What kind of naughty things can a monk get up to with a low-damage reach weapon? Like, Whirlwind Attack? Or grabbling two targets at once?

Yeah, I know this is MAD up the yin/yang (Str to hit, Int to damage, Wis and Dex to AC), but I'm holding out for the hope that White-Haired Witch will get Int to hit. Hey, I got the all-hair monk technique with the monk errata, right?

To solve some of the MAD problem, take Weapon Finesse and forget about strength. INT=DEX>WIS=CON>CHA=STR is how I'm seeing the weights for ability scores. Tiefling, elf, variant aasimar all would help you with that (if your DM lets you, you can get an aasimar with +2DEX, +2WIS from being garuda-blooded, then switch out your spell-like ability for +2INT). Half Elf would get you two favored classes and the floating ability increase, which is always nice when multiclassing. Human is good if you take any of my suggestions below and end up wanting more feats.

Toughness would also help with not having to worry as much about boosting your CON.

Since you are already taking Feral Combat Training, you should look into the style feats from UC I believe. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/style-feats

You might also like Combat Reflexes + Greater Trip + Vicious Stomp, if your DM allows you to use your hair for the 'stomp' with Feral Combat Training.

If you can work in all the prereqs, Whirlwind Attack would let you hit everything in range with your hair and potentially grapple all the enemies. If you did this with the trip stuff above, you could swap all the attacks for trips and get 2 attacks against them all if your trips are successful.

Finally, 1 level of synthesist might help you boost your physical scores, and you could take like Improved Damage (Hair), Reach (Hair), and Improved Natural armor, or Improved Ability Score(DEX) in place of two of those. That's a pretty cheesy option but there it is.

1) Your flurry won't be worth it. You take -2 on all your iteratives, but you only have an extra attack for the first one. Just go with fighter or something unless you really need the saving throw boosts from the monk.

2) Look at the Strength patron for an EK. It gets some of the Clerical self buffs.

A lot of the Debuff hexes like Evil Eye, Cackle, and Misfortune don't worry about level in the first place.

I really like this idea, and I might have a cool picture for you found Here. I might try to do this sometime as well.

None of that matters since the WHW gives up ALL hexes.

to the OP: this looks interesting on the surface but has a few weaknesses to it.
First, of course losing all hexes is a big deal but you can get around it. (I don't like it but it's not a deal breaker).

Second, all of the extra abilities that the WHW gets on the hair attack costs a swift action now so flurry all you want but you only get one of those Combat Maneuvers per round.

Third, Mad doesn't begin to describe it. Best case scenario you'll need Dex to hit, Int for Damage & Spells, Con for HP's and Wis for AC (since you probably won't be able to flurry in armor).

None of these are deal breakers it just means you are going to be extremely squishy for half your career and you'll need to be extremely careful or you'll be eating dirt every fight.

Since the hair gets range, and you get almost full spell progression, you don't really need CON and AC as much as a front line fighter. You just stand behind the front line and whip your hair back and forth or whatever. Because of that, you just focus on DEX and INT and just take 12-14 in WIS / CON as much as you feel necessary. Take toughness if you still feel squishy. Crane Style is probably a good choice for this build, which would let you boost AC another 3-4 once you get up to Crane Riposte, and deflect an attack every round. (And make another AoO when you do).

Then, go Tiefling, elf or the variant Aasimar I described before to get +2 to INT DEX and possibly WIS. You'll be decently well off. This probably isn't a good choice if you are using 15 point buy though.

1) Your flurry won't be worth it. You take -2 on all your iteratives, but you only have an extra attack for the first one.

Without flurrying you don't get any iteratives at all with Hair, so it's not a -2 for just one extra attack (which is actually worth it unless you are only hitting on an 18 from what I've heard), it's a -2 to get 1-3 extra attacks depending on your level.

Going all the way to Witch level 8 before EK might be a good option too, as you get Pull and Strangle and up to 15 ft reach with the hair. You only lose 1 more BAB between witch level 5 and 8, and that's about the only downside unless you are anxious to unlock some fighter-only feats.

A lot of the Debuff hexes like Evil Eye, Cackle, and Misfortune don't worry about level in the first place.

I really like this idea, and I might have a cool picture for you found Here. I might try to do this sometime as well.

None of that matters since the WHW gives up ALL hexes.

to the OP: this looks interesting on the surface but has a few weaknesses to it.
First, of course losing all hexes is a big deal but you can get around it. (I don't like it but it's not a deal breaker).

Second, all of the extra abilities that the WHW gets on the hair attack costs a swift action now so flurry all you want but you only get one of those Combat Maneuvers per round.

Third, Mad doesn't begin to describe it. Best case scenario you'll need Dex to hit, Int for Damage & Spells, Con for HP's and Wis for AC (since you probably won't be able to flurry in armor).

None of these are deal breakers it just means you are going to be extremely squishy for half your career and you'll need to be extremely careful or you'll be eating dirt every fight.

So instead of Sohei take hexcrafter magus and enough levels to get a hex (4 I think) then use feats to get more hexes or arcana.

There have been several threads on this issue and as far as I remember everyone of them ended without a consent on can or can not.
I think I remember that at least one had quotes from the guy who wrote the class in it.

I'm too lazy to make proper links for every one of those but here are some of the threads on this topic:

Since the hair gets range, and you get almost full spell progression, you don't really need CON and AC as much as a front line fighter. You just stand behind the front line and whip your hair back and forth or whatever. Because of that, you just focus on DEX and INT and just take 12-14 in WIS / CON as much as you feel necessary. Take toughness if you still feel squishy. Crane Style is probably a good choice for this build, which would let you boost AC another 3-4 once you get up to Crane Riposte, and deflect an attack every round. (And make another AoO when you do).

Then, go Tiefling, elf or the variant Aasimar I described before to get +2 to INT DEX and possibly WIS. You'll be decently well off. This probably isn't a good choice if you are using 15 point buy though.

Don't forget, when the hair hits it grapples and once you grapple you move your target adjacent to you opening you up for a full attack from it as soon as it's turn. Grapple builds with low AC and low HP's die. Quickly.

As for the flurry in armor the author of the Sohei archetype specifically stated it was not intended to give the monk the ability to flurry. 9 times out of 10 any GM who looks at the archetype and sees that dev quote on it will not let you flurry in it.
Link to authors post.

In any case, I think this concept is still viable without armor. Just get Mage Armor in a wand or just pick up the spell if you need an armor boost.

As for the grapple pulling them closer to you, I want to say that shouldn't happen since the witch doesn't gain the grappled condition (it seems more like the hair is doing the grappling than the witch). However, I don't think that is RAW and I'm not sure if it's RAI.. In any case, since it doesn't say to use your INT for CMD when you grapple you probably won't have much luck holding enemies anyway.

I figured the hair grapple [i]should[i]work like whip grappling with Greater Whip Mastery, except you could still attack other targets since you have many strands of hair. That's completely my opinion and not RAW or RAI

You're better off going with the base Witch with the Prehensile Hair Hex. It keeps int for all attacks with the hair including hit and damage, and CMBs/CMDs as well since the hex says to treat your int as if it's str for the hair as a limb, instead of giving specific times to use it, so it applies to anything str would.

You keep the normal Hexes, start with 10 ft. reach which is all you were going to get anyways, you don't get imp grab or the swift trip/pull, but the other build is so MAD you won't make those CMB checks anyways, and burn a feat you really don't have for wpn finesse.

Go Maneuver master Monk instead of Sohei, and a level of Unarmed fighter for the IUS and a free style feat. Maneuver master gives you a free maneuver on a full attack, and free manuever feats.

MM Monk 2/Unarmed Fig 2/Witch 16 is better spells, save or suck hexes that have DC's that will matter (particularly Misfortune and Evil Eye, evil eye works one round even on a passed save so with cackle it's permanent) gives you a normal BAB of 11/6/1 and a bonus maneuver on top, with 2 feats free, take trip and grapple and then quick trip/rapid grapple to grapple as a swift. FCT and IUS makes Hex Strike usable with the hair, so apply a hex on top of a hair attack. You have 16 mins of hair a day, so plenty to go around, most combats are under 10 rounds, hexes are unlimited, you'll get a full day out of pretty much everything. You won't get to 9th level spells, but unless you play in a completely different environment than I have, you won't see level 20 anyways. Take Magical Lineage(the +2 caster level trait right?) and

EK gives you good BAB and spells, but giving up your hexes completely for the hair, and then only getting it to a 10ft reach, you would have only gotten a 14BAB at witch9/sohei1/EK10, while this way you make them roll 2x to break.

TGMax, the white haired witch's reach increases to 15 at level 8, and the WHW gets unlimited duration hair (not a big deal at level 20, but at low levels that will make a difference). Also, with Maneuver Master monk you give up regular flurry of blows, so you would only get a single attack with the hair and one maneuver, instead of 2-4 attacks which can be switched out for maneuvers anyway.

Yes you lose the hexes, and that's a big tradeoff, but WHW+sohei=>EK is definitely going to be better able to fight in melee than the build you are suggesting and I think that's the character concept the OP was trying to pull off.

okay, wow, I had no idea people had actually posted in this thread...so I went ahead and statted out a white-haired witch/sohei/eldritch knight myself. I was planning on submitting it to Broken Zenith's Guide to the Builds thread, but, uh, it could always use some improvement.

I went with Boar Style, because I think I saw bits of 'The Bride with White Hair 2', and there were a lot of bloody hair tentacles, and not so much tripping. The build relies on two, somewhat questionable interpretations (as always, thanks white-haired witch, grr argh)

1. The white-haired witch's 'constrict' ability isn't like the usual constrict monster rule (which lets a monster deal constrict damage on a successful grapple check), but rather deals constrict damage from a single swift action. So, since it's your 'feral unarmed strike' that's damaging the creature in the constrict, I'm interpreting a hit->grapple->constrict as two damaging hits, which sets off the Boar Style bleed and demoralize.

2. A white-haired witch can grapple at range and not gain the 'grappled' condition, which means she can cast her spells normally (as long as you maintain the grapple with a move action). And since you're already in contact with your victim, your touch spells automatically hit. This would normally be extremely difficult, because you can't cast spells with somatic components while grappled (and the good touch spells do have somatic components), and even if you Stilled your touch spell, you'd have to pass a really nasty concentration check to pull it off.

Let's see. Right now I'm at white-haired witch 5/sohei 1/eldritch knight 6. If I were to take this build all the way to 20, I'd probably go whw4/soh1/whw1/ek9/whw3/soh2, which ends at 8th level spells (including divine power, not bad), 15 ft. hair, and +15 BaB (+14/+14/+9/+4 hair flurry).

What do folks think? About both the build, and the questionable rules interpretations?

I have an idea. Take both Sohei and Sensei together, so that that way you can dump strengths and focus almost solely on Int and Wis since Int will help with Hair fighting and Wis will help with monk weapons and your AC. next go for either Dex for more AC or Con for HP.

And a bonus will be being able to both Buff and Debuff thanks to your bardic performance, meaning you'll be more versitale.

Granted you cant flurry now, but thats okay since you dont wanna be trading blows to close to th enemy

I have an idea. Take both Sohei and Sensei together, so that that way you can dump strengths and focus almost solely on Int and Wis since Int will help with Hair fighting and Wis will help with monk weapons and your AC. next go for either Dex for more AC or Con for HP.

And a bonus will be being able to both Buff and Debuff thanks to your bardic performance, meaning you'll be more versitale.

Granted you cant flurry now, but thats okay since you dont wanna be trading blows to close to th enemy

uh, it looks like Sensei and Sohei both have replacements for fast movement.

1) Your flurry won't be worth it. You take -2 on all your iteratives, but you only have an extra attack for the first one. Just go with fighter or something unless you really need the saving throw boosts from the monk.

2) Look at the Strength patron for an EK. It gets some of the Clerical self buffs.

In particular unarmed fighter which will net you improved unarmed strike for free

And, the Boars thing is stretching it a lot. However, Hair/Hair/Rend/constrict is just fine. No spell and boar style in the same round tho, unless you go hexcrafter Magus. which I might, actually, if i got to start the character at at least 6th level. But playing up from 1, I'd go witch.

How exactly do I get more than 1 attack per round with hair without Feral Combat Training/flurry? (aside from, say, being both a white-haired witch and a hexcrafter magus, or casting strangling hair, or all three)

Oh, I see. Hexcrafter magus hair/spell combat|spellstrike with hair, trigger boar style. That's not bad, actually, but you're still missing out on the iterative attacks you'd get if you just used a sword. It's a pity that a hexcrafter magus can't burn pool to boost your minutes/day of a hex power, or something like that.

Wait another minute. I said something kinda mean to TGMM back there. Lemme try again.

Okay, instead of going full white-haired witch to eldritch knight, let's see what we can do with a hexcrafter who uses the prehensile hair hex.

Prehensile hair hex is a secondary attack. So, whatever happens, you're always going to be attacking at -5, right? While it does sound cool to spend arcane pool to attack an orc with an animated flaming beard (I know I would), I just can't see wanting to try to rely solely on that hex for attacks or useful combos.

There is one good use for prehensile hair hex for the magus, however: casting spells. The magus suffers a 'hands' problem, where they always have to have one hand free to cast spells. With prehensile hair, a magus could wield a greatsword and cast with their hair (it's as dextrous as a human hand, remember?), and then use spellstrike and basically 'dual-wield' their greatsword. That's actually a really interesting nova power for the magus.

Not really what I'm going for in terms of flavor, but it's undeniably mighty.